But Wilbur smilingly explained that the one suit case was all he had brought.
On the way to the hotel, Wilbur decided that it might be advisable for him to buy a suit of evening clothes and they went at once to a tailor shop on the Strand.
It didn’t take Berg long to convince himself that Wilbur Wright was no slicker, but decidedly on the level, and that if he said his machine would fly, then it must be true.
A day after their first meeting, Berg and Wilbur were joined by F. R. Cordley, of the Flint firm, in Europe on a vacation trip, and the three went to Paris together. They “descended,” as the French say, at the Hotel Meurice, on the rue de Rivoli.
It was still broad daylight when they arrived and Berg almost immediately led Wilbur across the street into the Tuileries gardens. They strolled to the Place de la Concorde and looked up the length of the magnificent Avenue des Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe. The horse chestnut trees were still in blossom, and Berg, a resident of Paris during most of his life, was feeling happy over the opportunity to show this stranger his first glimpse of the most beautiful city on earth at its loveliest season.
Before he had been long in Paris, Wilbur attended a balloon meet at St. Cloud, and a few days later made his first trip in a balloon.
A Paris Herald reporter, who talked with Wilbur at St. Cloud, was impressed by his reticence and made this statement: “Mr. Wright talked carefully, as if all was mapped out in advance. It was obvious that he feared to be caught in a trap concerning his remarkable machine and what he wants to do with it. At the end of each question his clean-shaven face relapsed into a broad, sphinx-like smile.”
It now seemed wise to try to form a company to buy European rights to the airplane, or to sell the rights to a private financier, rather than to deal with the Government, through politicians; and a wealthy man had become interested: M. Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe, an oil magnate, who had also been a patron of ballooning.
When Wilbur Wright met Deutsch de la Meurthe, the latter, a cautious trader, said that before investing any money he wanted to make sure the French Government would be interested in buying airplanes.
Wilbur then decided that it would be both discourteous and imprudent not to have a talk with Letellier or Fordyce, with whom there had been previous negotiations, and let them know what was going on—particularly since Deutsch de la Meurthe was known to have close relations with Le Matin, a rival of Letellier’s newspaper, Le Journal. He got in touch with Fordyce, and told him a little of the current situation. Shortly afterward, Letellier invited Wilbur to lunch. Letellier seemed indignant that the Wrights had not resumed negotiations with him. Wilbur told him he could doubtless be included if a company should be formed. But that didn’t suit Letellier. He didn’t care to join a company organized by Deutsch de la Meurthe; if a company was formed he wanted to be the prime mover in it himself. He said nothing, however, about interfering with efforts being made to form a company—possibly because he thought they would not be successful.